Quiet
by hopeintheproles
Summary: He smiled lightly at her, and she tried, God, she really tried to smile back. But the scared little girl with duct tape over her mouth could only envision those white white walls. Rated M. Chlark. Newly updated. Finally finished.
1. Chapter 1

In the distance he can hear the phone ring in the kitchen. Clark Kent walks slowly towards it, stares at it briefly, and picks it up.

"Hey." says the soft voice of Lois Lane. Clark Kent lets out a sigh of relief, glad it is only her and no one he can't muster the courage to deal with, "Hey" he says back.

"How is she?" Lois continues, and Clark lets out another sigh - this one much heavier and more tired than the last, and rakes his hand through his hair in a signature moment of frustration.

"She's okay - she's better" he stutters, "but still not that great. She still won't talk to me, to anyone. I guess it's still early but, God, Lois, some mornings I'll walk in there to see if she's awake, if she's hungry or ready to say anything, and she's just laying there, despondent, staring at the wall. At nothing" Clark feels it all pouring out, desperate to smother the silence that's built up at the Kent household, "I feel like I'm over my head. I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm doing this wrong. What if I make her worse?" He pleads Lois.

Lois takes in a huge breath and feels her heart ache in sympathy, "You saw how she was when we found her. She didn't want anyone else but you. She didn't say anything, couldn't look at anybody but then you were there and the relief was so evident in her eyes. She's not ready for anything, but Clark, I know she's exactly where she wants and needs to be. You won't mess this up. You're her best friend."

Clark closes his eyes and squints at the horizon, at the setting sun and feels calmer, more in control after her reassurance, "Yeah, you're right. I guess there isn't really any handbook for this is there?"

"No" comes Lois's voice softly at the other end "There's not."

And Clark wishes more than anything that there was one, because he doesn't know how to do this, how to save someone without the burning building or the train about to be set off its track with the school of orphan children screaming and crying.

He's always lost this sort of rescue battle, when there's someone's sanity and mind at risk. He's never been good at it, never known the right steps, and none of his super human abilities have ever been helpful in matters like these.

He says a quick goodbye to Lois and decides to check up on Chloe. He tends to give her her space throughout the day, she mostly meanders around the farm; finding holes to hide herself in or behind - he doesn't blame her, she'd spent most of the month before without any place to hide, only be hidden.

Lois told him that the farm would be the best place for her - wide open, out of the city, quiet, and reclusive. No one would bother them, and he'd hear _them_ coming if they were smart enough to know where to look - it was of course, big news, when one of their own had gone missing.

From the view of his back porch he can already hear her. She'd taken shelter sitting behind a tree, facing the sunset, the fields. He checks her heart beat, and her breathing. She's breathing shallow, but she might be napping. Sleep eludes her, and when it does find her it's often when she doesn't expect and can no longer fight it when it claims her in random spots all over the farm.

He walks towards her, quiet, calm, yet trying to make his presence aware. He has no desire to spook her or startle her.

When he stands in front of her he can see she's clearly awake and staring into the setting sun. He takes a seat next to her and offers his silence and companionship as her only consolation for everything he couldn't provide before. Not fast enough, not smart enough. If the situation had been reversed she'd have found him sooner. She was always the intelligent one of the group. The reporter, the investigator.

She has her bad days and her good days. On her bad days it's like she can't breathe, can't get enough air. He hears her wheezing in the distance as she gasps and chokes and he can't really do anything to tell her that it's okay, that she's fine. Just gathers her gently in his arms and rubs circles on her back, whispering reassurances. And if it's really bad he'll sit with his back to the floor and press her back to his chest, imitating deep breaths and living until she can calm herself or be calmed and find relief on his shoulder, head lolling from exhaustion.

Sometimes it's entirely too much for him.

He can't imagine what it's like for her.

But today is one of her better days. She slept fitfully through the night but it wasn't as bad as others. There were small signs of improvement if he looked in all the right places, in the cracks she managed to fill herself in. She knew she was in the dark, and that Clark was there, standing in the glimmer of light, waiting, _waiting_, for her to glance up from that corner she so desperately hid herself in.

With all the words she never said Clark could hear her begging for invisibility, asking not to be seen. She could barely stand his stare. It always made her realize what she was not.

But now, he could tell, she was content to sit and stare out at the almost set sun. The pinks and oranges blending and bleeding into deepening hues of the darkness promised to come.

Clark could no longer help himself and turned to stare at her. Just slightly. Her eyes were listless and unmoving, lips set and brow furrowed. But slowly she turned to look at him warily, and that was enough for him. It was a response, an acknowledgment. Dark green eyes freckled with brown stared into his own blue.

'Lapis Lazuli' she'd once told him.

Clark looked down to where her hands were resting beside her and took one into his large, warm hand. It was early summer and her hands were still cold to the touch. Chloe swallowed the lump that suddenly appeared in her throat and looked down at their hands. He hadn't really interlocked them, just sort of held it, swiping his thumb across the back of hers. He smiled lightly at her, and she tried, God, she really tried to smile back. But the scared little girl with duct tape over her mouth could only envision those white white walls. So white and endless and mind numbing. Telling her no emotion. Demanding it.

She doesn't know how much longer she can take.

At night it's all Clark can do to throw off his covers and run to her room. She's mostly quiet, never rustles around trying to find the right position or smack the pillow to remove some of its lumpiness. She alternates between those wheezing breaths and the soft pillows of breath that result from light sleep, from succumbing to fitful exhaustion. He can hear her breathing start to speed up and her heart beating much faster before all but hammering in his ears. That is when she starts to thrash and wakes up gasping with a start. He can see the silent scream on her face. Even in her sleep, she is terrified, her hands are terrified. Her body is rigid with fear. But even in her sleep she makes no use of her voice. Let's whoever is in that room with her control her.

But tonight, tonight it's different. Tonight it's about _his_ sanity and the fact that he can't take those choking sounds anymore. The sound of her throat closing off air supply at the cause of that invisible hand that seems to follow her no matter where she goes.

When they'd found her her neck was black, blue, green, purple, yellow, almost every colour of the rainbow. It didn't matter how many times they did it or how many more they threatened the damage was done. The way she looked at him sometimes, and those choking noises, sometimes it seemed like she was begging him to finish the job. Clark could never finish those thoughts - not ever.

He gets up from his bed and walks quietly and quickly to her door. She doesn't bother locking it or even closing it. She is sitting up regaining her breath from yet another nightmare. She looks at him, eyes wild, and he can see for a split second she doesn't recognize him. It breaks his heart and angers him at the same time.

He walks to the side of the bed and sits back against the headboard, legs long out in from of him. Chloe lets him because she knows he'd never do anything to her, never hurt her. Even in her rapidly deteriorating state of mind she knows that. The amount of trust she puts in him scares her. The amount of comfort he brings unnerves her as well. But she can never deny him, so used to grappling for anything Clark would give her. And it's for that reason, sometimes out of habit, other times out of necessity, that she lets Clark touch her.

Her eyes are blinking heavily and with delirious fatigue. Her breath not wheezing but catching, ready to sob but unwilling. Clark places his hand on her back and she lets those eyes shut tightly at the instant comfort his warm hand rubbing circles over the cloth of her t-shirt seems to bring. Her t-shirt is blue, it's one of his.

"Chloe, c'mere" Clark whispers into the stillness of the room. He's never attempted to sleep with her in the few weeks she's been hiding at the Kent's, but she can see now it's only a matter of time before old habits start to break down her new ones. Her intense love for this super human of a man breaking down this seemingly steel wall that has embedded itself into every fragment of her bones and heart and mind.

Chloe doesn't know what it feels like to not sleep for six months but she imagines that it probably feels like not sleeping for two weeks. And it's with that that Chloe finally lets down one of those old habits and scoots slowly, hesitantly, but backwards (and actually forwards) into the prone elongated body of Clark Kent. He's lying on his side and snakes an arm around Chloe's middle, pushing his other underneath his pillow. One of his legs manages to nudge itself in-between Chloe's legs and instead of feeling invaded and overwhelmed she feels so secure it hurts. Gasping as the wetness manages to leak out uninvited from her eyes Clark mumbles small promises and reassurances of an okay future, and at least a better tomorrow. At least that's what she hears in his 'it's okay's'. Hands clutching each other Chloe finally drifts into sleep knowing that the man who's engulfing her body, flooding her with warmth, has super hearing, super speed, and x - ray vision. Telling her for once, _for once_, that yes it's okay to let that guard down. Just this once. Only this once.

And so they sleep.

She dreams of nothing. Nothing except white noise and the fuzzy black and white you see in-between cable channels, lost in unchartered TV land. Nothing except the static you hear on radio stations that have lost reception, lost their intended audience.

In the morning Chloe wakes slowly and lethargically. A big step for not having slept in weeks. She and Clark are still tangled, limbs entwined. And she can feel his heavy breath on her neck. Warm, just like the rest of him. Chloe has to close her eyes again at the precarious feeling of completion. She tries to distance herself from it, numb herself and envision those white white walls but it hurts to when she's been so cold for so long and especially when Clark tightens his hold on her and nestles further into her neck, feeling his nose skim the sensitive area behind her ear. It just feels so good. And she wonders again if this is what she deserves.

She can feel Clark waking, probably having sensed the shift in the beating of her heart. How it's picked up its pace again, stuttering quickly like that of a bunny.

"Good morning Chloe" Clark mumbles from her neck, which he seems to have taken a liking to. He rolls onto his back and Chloe immediately misses the warmth. But it is good, she tells herself, better to distance and remove. Better for everyone, because there's so much at stake.

Chloe shifts and settles on her side watching him coolly. Dispassionately. She misses the warmth but already she can feel like it matters less now. The light of day has again revealed the cracks and the harshness found on solid ground. But she watches him. Because of him she has slept, peacefully. And the never-ending tiredness is still there, but _god_, it's significantly less.

Clark turns on his side to mimic her. Glad to have her attention instead of a vacant stare.

He places his hand gently on her cheek and rubs his thumb lightly underneath her eyes.

"No nightmares?" He asks, and Chloe shakes her head No against his hand.

Clark smiles at the communication and the hope he begins to feel.

"You gonna talk to me today?" He asks again, and only feels slight disappointment when she doesn't do anything. He is used to this. He is still clinging to the unexpected joy at having her communicate with him at all. When she is ready, he thinks to himself.

If she's ever ready, nags at his head all day.

Chloe is surprised to find the adamancy that Clark conveys with everything he does in order to make life easier for her. To make it better, or even bearable.

She's so frail still, from having not eaten, and getting used to not eating. And not wanting to eat at all. But he makes her breakfast, lunch, and dinner like clockwork. Her skinny body sitting daintily onto the crocheted seat, looking down wearily and tiredly at the food in front of her. Her stomach already protesting. But each day she looks at Clark and that look continues to get to her each day. That look that says he'll starve if she does. That every bite she doesn't take malnourishes him too, and every bite she does take gives him strength as it does to her.

And every afternoon they settle down on his bed, she already weary. Her muscles have deteriorated slightly, from non use and misuse. But each day is a battle and a victory when she can walk further and stand up longer and eat more. So they settle on his bed. Clark will lie down on the pillows and hold the book in front of him as Chloe will settle her head onto his shoulder and listen as he reads the book out loud. Getting softer and softer as Clark hears her heartbeat become more regular and her breath evens out. Her daily afternoon nap becomes his chance to read and simultaneously watch over her. As long as he is touching her, holding her, she can sleep. He hates to think of what this means for the future, if she can live without it, but he finds he doesn't mind if he has to follow her around for the rest of his life in order to make sure she can breathe properly.

He doesn't like to think of the future because it's so unsure and unstable.

But so far she's still got her head against his shoulder and in her sleep an arm snakes across his stomach to hold him and he's feel okay. He smiles against her forehead. He feels better than okay.

But things naturally get complicated sometimes. Despite the fact that this is Chloe, who he's known for _years_ and whom the object of his old friendship affords him many comforts and perks. But she's still a girl, still elusive and slightly mysterious in that she's got those two x chromosomes and he's only got the one (that they know of). Her parts are still different and not muted by years of platonic friendship, and at times not so platonic.

But like most things with Chloe, she surprises him, and he even manages to surprise himself.

She can manage to go to the bathroom on her own, take care of that with all the regularity of the Chloe of old. But he finds if he does not pester her, and then force her, she will not bathe or shower on her own. He doesn't know what it is, getting clean or maybe being exposed or just not caring but she's developed an aversion to it.

At the hospital he didn't know which deity or almighty goddess supreme to thank when the doctors told him physically yes she'd been violated multiple times, but sexually all abuse came up negative. If there was ever a moment he'd been more relieved it was when it felt like his stomach and his heart combined seemed to drop to this feet at that news. If she had been, he didn't know if he could help her and that for sure was not an option. Not in Clark Kent's mind.

But Clark and Chloe have turned her bathing ritual into a dance. When her hair and skin become too oily and greasy to ignore Clark will stand in front of her, arms crossed and face determined not to crack under Chloe's intense steel gaze.

"It's time for a bath" He'll tell her. And like a child she'll set her arms and fuss and he knows if she could she'd whine. Somehow he'll manage to finagle her up the stairs and into the bathroom.

He turns on the water and sets it how she likes it, so warm it borders on stinging but not scathing, and then turns his back as she gets undressed. The soap has already been poured into the water and she'll gather herself around the bubbles, head resting on her knees. Ready, compliant and so incredibly vulnerable Clark makes sure to make it as easy as possible.

Kneeling on the floor next to the tub Clark will wash her back, arms, face, anything exposed to him, chattering and rambling about next to nothing in order to distract her from thinking about anything except the soothing sound of his voice. And it works. From the combined effect of his hands and soap washing away all of her dirt and pain and indecency and the soft lull of his deep voice her eyes waver and close, bewitched by his siren song.

For the finishing touches he'll scoop water into a cup, have her tilt her head back, and soak her hair. Applying liberal amounts of shampoo and massaging her scalp. Sometimes he smirks to himself at the similarity between Chloe and putty at this moment. Sometimes he tricks himself into thinking he can hear her purr.

But mostly he tricks himself into not seeing the angry newly healed scars on her back. Or how soft the feel of her skin is. It's tricky but he manages to not dwell on the intimacy of the moment.

When he's done he closes his eyes and waits for her to step into the towel he has waiting for her.

Tonight, he wraps it around her and rubs the material, simultaneously drying her off and keeping her warm. Chloe lays her head on his shoulder in response and buries her nose into his hoodie, smelling and sighing. He can tell she wants to say something because she looks at him, really looks at him, and her eyes portray everything she can't and is not willing to say. That she's sorry, and grateful, and so, so afraid.

Clark only rests a hand on her cheek and smiles slightly. Silently communicating that it's alright, he's happy to, showing that he cannot talk and talk to her too. That he can understand her.

She closes her eyes in relief.

So it's like he says. That each day brings with it silent victories as she opens up more and more, communicates more and more. Clark loves the days where she seems to smile more. Small, sad little smiles but there's life behind those eyes again. She's coming back slowly and at her own pace with her own terms but he can't imagine her doing it any other way.

But sometimes he needs her to talk to him. To tell him he's doing something right, that he's not making a muck out of the one thing she really needs him for. But Chloe was never one to settle for convention, and it's when they're both sitting on the porch swing watching the sun go down yet again that she subtly moves her hand atop his. She just lays it there at first but she slowly clutches inward and envelops his hand more surely and determinedly. It makes him so happy he stares at her and thinks to himself he doesn't know what he'd do without her. But she just stares forward, the sun shining through her hair lighting up the ends and giving her a glow. She's looking stronger, no longer staring at the ground or at nothing but forward.

She's been staying at Clark's for two months when she really begins to surprise him.

She had been rifling through some old clothes in the attic that day looking for something more weather appropriate to wear. So when she comes down the stairs Clark forgets to breathe a little because she finally is beginning to look like her old self, and yet she's different. Her hair has grown longer, settling contentedly the length of her shoulder blades. The dress is old, _a dress_, and it falls to right above her knees. It clenches around her waist and is decorated with sunflowers and she's _beautiful_. Lovely is the only word he can think of.

He stops what he's doing and calls her over. She walks quietly yet calmly over.

"I'm going into town today to get some things. I'm not going far, just to the grocery store and maybe the pharmacy." He keeps checking her eyes, her face, for a tick or a sign of discomfort but there's none, "Are you gonna be okay by yourself?"

Chloe twists her hands nervously for a second, reaches out, hesitates, and reaches out again to grasp the pencil and quickly jots down in scrawling print 'can i come?'

He smiles proudly at her, a gesture she returns, and he grabs her hand and says nothing else.

By the time they're riding down the driveway with the dust obscuring the Kent farmhouse from view just slightly their hands are still touching. Slightly entwined and resting in-between them on the seat. She has her arm holding onto the door handle loosely. Clark can't help but notice how it's one of those perfect August haze days, where the time from three in the afternoon to seven seems to blur into one time frame that stretches into forever aided only by the distracting golden August hue to the sun. It sets everything golden, especially Chloe. He's seeing in gold today and can't help but feel that summer joy with her. She looks at him briefly and smiles lightly - and yeah, she definitely feels it too.

When he stops in front of the grocery store she motions to the pharmacy, Clark gives her a tenner and lets her walk on her own. Alone, and into the pharmacy. Her walk is nothing but Chloe, it slightly resembles the walk of a little girl and yet she manages to incorporate an independent stride in there somehow. He watches her walk away and smiles when she doesn't even look back.

He meets her in front of the pharmacy and he laughs when he sees what she's got.

"Hair dye?" he questions, and she grins impishly and gestures to the very brown and exposed roots on her head. But it's not blond, it's slightly blond, red, and brown. So he just shrugs, laughs, and tells her he'll help when they get back. He can understand her need to transform. To change and somehow be different at the end of it all. And he can understand how she doesn't just want that in the form of scars and personality changes and unspoken shame.

Chloe struggles to recognize her old self, and after everything, looks forward to seeing something different in the mirror, in her reflection. Something she helped to create and decided to be instead of others trying to make that change in her themselves. Once passive, now active.

She dreams differently now too. She doesn't tell him and he can never really figure out what they're about, but he falls asleep holding her and has become quite intrigued by her shifting dream patterns.

In the beginning she didn't dream at all. She felt almost lifeless in his arms, eyes unmoving, chest minimally moving up and down. But now she dreams and doesn't remember, she wakes up in a daze and has a faraway look in her eyes. She desperately tries to hold on to them but they slip through her fingers like sand. She breathes deeply, strongly, and heavily at times. He'll be in-between sleep and awake when he'll suddenly feel the difference. Her ribs rising and falling under his arms. It doesn't sound like duress, really, she's not whimpering or scared. But she's doing something, running after something or someone, catching up, hiding, and eluding the grasp of whatever it is that chases her.

It is around the middle of her third month there that Clark finally begins to feel his patience wearing thin. He understands that she needs time and that she's been through so much and that maybe all the time in the world wouldn't even help her. Maybe not even a little.

But his life is starting to drift into the mundane. He's abandoned all of his responsibilities and jobs and everything just to be with her all the time. And he's now wondering if she even needs him anymore, if maybe she only tolerates his presence and has decided to keep him in the dark about her suddenly deciding she's never going to talk again.

He wants to be there for her, but he needs to know what it is exactly she needs. Especially if he can't be the one to give it to her. But she refuses to give him any answers and despite everything that's made him so happy for her and for him over the past few months, it's beginning to border on not enough. Everything that he's feeling for her has so suddenly invaded his mind and he can't make heads or tails of it.

So it's on the warm evening in the beginning of September that Clark finally decides enough is enough, that he's going to get some answers of out her. That she needs to tell him, he needs her to make it real.

Funnily enough he finds her in the loft, his loft. She's balancing precariously on the ledge looking out onto the farm and he thinks suddenly to himself how he never finds or hears her crying. There have been a handful of times he's seen Chloe in the past three and a half months with evidence of tears or traces lingering. He wonders why.

Coming to sit beside her he chastises her softly, "You know, you shouldn't be on that ledge, it's kind of dangerous." Chloe raises her eyebrows and looks down at the dirt ground below and quirks an eyebrow at him as if to say, 'Come on, you and I both know that's never gonna happen.' and besides she thinks to herself, I've got you.

Clark lets out a breath and looks down at his feet, bare. Exposed. Chloe looks at them too and wishes Clark could read minds because she wants to tell him how strange and how nice it is to see his bare feet. They are never bare. Always ready to go somewhere, save someone. It is with that that Chloe feels that lingering sadness creep up on her again, he doesn't wear shoes anymore, Chloe morosely thinks, because he's stuck here with me. Resignedly she looks down at the ground again and wonders if she caught Clark off guard, slipped away at night, if she could fall to her death. But she wouldn't dare do that to him.

She feels his hand on her arm, turning her around.

"Chloe" he begs, he implores her, "I need you to talk to me. You have to. I can't communicate like this anymore. I need you to tell me whatever it is that's keeping you so afraid."

Chloe immediately jumps up with a panicked look on her face. She begs him back, begs him not to ask this of her. This impossible demand. It is her love for him that keeps her silent. She wants to give him everything and yet she can't.

Shaking her head back and forth she can't risk it, can't risk it.

Clark stands up and stands in front of the pacing Chloe, she's brought her hands up to her hair and is tugging slightly at the chestnut strands. He grabs for them and pulls them away from her face.

"Chloe, look at me" his blue eyes peer into her, brow furrowed, "Please" She looks up finally and there, he finally sees them, sees the tears that are making their way down her face with the promise of more to come, "I have to know. You have to tell me. I can't help you if you don't tell me. I'm your best friend. Please" She wants to keen and yell and whimper but all she can do is let out a strangled sob. She looks up at him and begs him with her eyes, 'Why, oh why, are you asking this of me?'

"Chloe" she can hear his voice, the pain and anguish hidden there.

'No' she shakes her head.

"Please. This is killing me." His arms come up to embrace her shoulders and she sobs louder at his admission and starts hitting him wherever she can.

'You idiot. You big stupid dumb idiot' she thinks over and over again, making tiny angry hands in fists and punching them against his 'man of steel' chest.

He lets her for a little, lets her hit him until he realizes she knows she can't hurt him. She's trying to hurt herself. And so he gathers her up and holds her impossibly close and tight. She continues to shake her head into his neck, 'Don't do this. Please don't do this. I'll leave' she thinks 'I'll leave and I'll never come back. You don't have to find me anymore. I can let this thing go.'

But Clark is having none of it, and can no longer listen to her sobs anymore. So he slides his hands up into her hair and pulls her face away from his neck. And kisses her.

Chloe feels her eyebrows rise at the feel of his lips on hers but she dares not open her eyes. Not from this nightmare turned dream. Slowly she relaxes, his lips still on hers start moving and brushing against her top and then her bottom lip. Chloe sighs and weaves her fingers through his hair, bitten down stubs of finger nails scratch against his scalp and he moans slightly into her mouth.

This, this is what he's wanted but has been too ashamed to admit. They hurt her, really hurt her, and all he could think about was wanting to kiss her. It wasn't right, it was never right. They had never gotten the time to get it right, never needed each other equally. But it was different now.

Those hands, hands she has felt and thought about in her dreams, are now on her, forcing her more into his embrace to get closer. Hands that have been pliant and platonic now race the expanse of her back and rub dangerously close to her bottom. She knows this is what her heaven will be like. Kissing Clark Kent for the rest of her life.

She gasps as one of his hands settles on her stomach, the muscles there fluttering. He uses it to his advantage as his tongue makes its way into her mouth, twisting with her own.

He suddenly turns her around, her back to his chest. He sweeps the hair off of her neck in one fluid movement and settles it again with the other as they move their way up and down the expanse of Chloe's torso. Added to that, his lips are doing sinful and wonderful things to skin behind Chloe's ear and she gasps and heaves and doesn't know where this has suddenly come from but she's about to drop to her knees in pleasurable torture. Especially those moments when his hands make their way over her breasts. Stopping briefly to explore, but all too quickly leaving. She has to bite her lip to keep from moaning and speaking out.

But this is his goal, she discovers, as he speaks into her ear finally in lust-filled tones, "Come on Chlo'" he encourages before swooping down again and sucking the pale skin above her collar bone "Talk to me" he implores once more as she shakes her head and gasps as he continues. She can't even find it in her to be mad, or be angry. Not when this is everything.

She almost loses her control when one of those hands finally stills on top of her breast, rubbing and massaging the flesh. She presses herself back into him, eager to find friction to release the tension. "Say anything, anything to me" he continues to ask of her, and still she gasps and shakes her head 'No' as her hand reaches up to clasp behind his neck. 'No' she thinks and really means Yes, especially when he switches his attention to the other neglected breast and passes his thumb over the nipple, 'Yes' she thinks, and gasps hotly into his ear. Clark too is eager to find that friction. He can practically hear her making those desperate little moans and groans she must be holding in with great control and it makes their way south of him. He rubs her small yet firm breast in his hand and with the other starts to massage the tops of her thighs.

This isn't where he intended to be but he can't help it. On his quest to find her voice this is where it has led him. And it feels more right, and definitely more wrong, than he intended.

He suddenly changes the game and flips them around, he towers over her and instead of cowering she seeks to lay herself against it. Try to match him part for part. He fingers the t-shirt she's wearing before pulling it over her head and lightly pushing her down onto the bed behind them.

She's braless and she lies panting on the bed. He thinks 'beautiful' in his head and says it out loud unbeknownst to him and lays him over her desperate to feel her lips on him again. She feels so small and fragile beneath him and fears slightly that he might hurt her but he soon feels her hands slide underneath his own shirt and knows that he could never. His love for her overwhelms him in their closeness so he pushes himself up and takes off his shirt before staring down at her. Her eyes still beg him, for the same and different things, and her breasts heave.

Without thinking Clark leans down and sucks a nipple into his mouth, he knows this is the right (but wrongwrongwrong) move because Chloe throws her head back, grabs at his hair and is struggling to control her breath.

He hates that he is rushing things because there are so many things he needs to say to her but his sudden urge and need to hear her voice has suddenly spurred him into overdrive; she needs to say things back before he can. With two hands he undoes her jeans and momentarily detaches himself from her to pull them off. She's lying now nearly naked, and his pupils dilate at how lustful she looks. She wants this even more than he does, if that's even possible.

But there is a price to pay.

He leans his arm down by her head as support as he leans down and claims her lips again, their tongues dueling and lost between their hot breaths. His other hand steals its way down between the valley of her breasts, past her bellybutton and down to her underwear. She clutches at him. He won't give her what she needs, not without hearing her.

He slides his hand slowly underneath her panties and applies random kisses to her neck. He feels the wetness there and groans into her neck as her fingernails start to press into his back urgently, "What do you want Chloe?" he groans, "What do you need?" His fingers slide up and down, massaging her lightly, but not enough, not nearly enough. She pants, and he slides a digit over her clit. She cries out, she can't help it. "God Chlo, yes, please, please tell me."

She wants to sob, but she wants him more. He applies two more fingers to massage around her clit and it feels so good. But good doesn't even begin to describe it.

When he suddenly presses his thumb against her she breaks. She cries out, "Clark!" and her voice is raspy and hoarse from misuse but he hears it. He most definitely hears it. And it's beautiful and sexy and he's so glad to know it's there and that the first thing she says is his name.

"Chlo" he breathes, and wants to reward her. So he slides a finger inside, and it's like the dam has broke and with it have come all of her sounds, and moans, and groans. She whimpers and keens and Clark feels her urgency and lust and subtly her sadness.

"Please Clark" she begs and he almost rejoices in tears at her voice.

"Tell me what you want." He pleads back, "Please tell me Chloe" and she can't take it anymore and cries softly, "You"

Together they rid him of his pants and underwear. He slides hers down her thighs and they both groan and gasp as he enters her in one swift thrust.

She grasps onto his back and slides a hand into his hair as they kiss desperately. He tries to be gentle and soft but her noises, those sinful whimpering, pleasure-filled noises have turned him into an animal. His thrusts are steady but firm and fast and they are both covered with the beginnings of sweat.

She can't help but move against him in her quest to find release. She tilts her hips up and arches into him and he buries himself more deeply inside of her. Moaning each other's names their lovemaking becomes frantic. She can feel his hands everywhere, grasping the thighs that have wrapped themselves around his waist, her breasts, her hair.

She can feel herself becoming panicky, that sweet desperate climb is coming to a close and she's nearing the peak of her pleasure. Clark is there too, that she can feel too.

"Harder" demands Chloe and Clark groans and complies kisses her deeply, matching his tongue to his thrusts.

But Chloe can't keep quiet. Her moans have begun to escalate and increase in tone.

"Clark, please" she begs, she begs for that sweet plummet off the peak.

Clark thrusts into her once and twice more before they both cry out and release each other's names into the air as they both convulse around each other.

Clark sags onto the sweaty body of Chloe and feels his entire evaporate and materialize. He crashes onto the bed next to her, enveloping Chloe into his arms and atop his chest.

She's struggling to catch her breath. He can tell because she's suddenly sobbing.

"Chloe?" He asks, concerned and suddenly frightened. She leans up out of his arms and sobs into her hand.  
"Why did you make me do that?" She implores, sobbing and hiccupping and littering his chest with tears. And Clark suddenly becomes afraid he's hurt her, or worse, mistaken her as a willing partner. But she suddenly clarifies, "Why did you make me speak?" She's nauseous at the sound of her own voice. Having last been used to beg and to plead and scream.

"They told me not to. I'm not allowed to. They told-told me what would happen if they caught me" She's starting to ramble and he can't quite make sense of it all, "They said they would know, they'd know if I spoke. At all, even a peep. They'd find you and they'd take me back and I promised- I promised them I wouldn't. I'd never tell. And you made me! Why" She sobs even harder into her hand and mutters something like 'God', she's crumbling, "Why did you make me. They're gonna come back."

Clark has his arms around her at this point, trying to calm her and make sense of what he can. "Chloe, look at me" she refuses, too upset to care "They're not gonna get you. I made sure that they'd never _ever_ come back. Forget what you promised them!" He shouts "Listen to what I've promised you. I promised you that you'd never get hurt-" but she cuts him off mid rant

"I don't care what they do to me" she mutters tiredly, "I love _you_." And he feels his breath stop, his entire body catching. "It's you who they promised to take away and kill. They knew. They_ knew_" She sobs weakly into his chest from defeat and pain.

"I didn't know how to live for myself but they knew that half of me depended on you, and that all of me loved you. I told them I didn't care if I died. But they knew how much you'd get to me. What taking you away would do."

Clark struggles to think clearly and properly and feels his heart shattering at what she had been so willing to give away when he cared so much for her.

"I love you" he mutters into her hair, quietly and profoundly. He kisses her neck and brings her face to level with his, "Chloe, we locked them up forever. They're never escaping, and if they did they'd never get near you and they'd never get near me. If you asked me to I'd fly us around the world evading them for the rest of our lives. But you've gotta believe me Chlo' when I say that's never gonna happen. I need you to listen to me" she nods and wearily looks at him "because I'm only gonna say this once. We made sure they'd never bother you again. Or anyone. Okay?"

She sobs in relief and already wishes that she'd dry out because the waterworks are already starting to wear her down.

Clark lies them down and whispers reassurances to her between the sheets of his high school bed. They fall asleep sometime around sunset when Chloe has allowed reality to sink in that the world can go back to revolving. That talking will not be the end of her, or more importantly, the end of Clark.

She is a million steps away from where she needs to be or even being remotely close to okay. But she knows this is where she belongs, and that it's a start.

He can understand why she refused to tell him what kept her silent so long. She won't ever say but he knows. He failed to protect her once, more than once but once in that really big way, and she could barely comprehend what it would mean had she been forced to go back if she'd broken that promise - real or not. She'd been ready not to take any chances, none at all. They'd been true to their word many times before.

But slowly, she was getting the help she needed. She was finding peace whenever it presented itself and opening herself up to the possibility of speaking more. For a month, an endless month of alternating darkness and white and being told what she wanted what she could get and where she could go. They'd only begun to pry into the deep-seated humiliation she'd felt and could never really rid herself of. Of having been denied rights to a bathroom, alone or with guards, and had on more than one occasion been forced to urinate in chairs she'd been strapped to.

She won't tell him what the scars on her back are from but he has several good guesses - she keeps these things from him because she knows what it feels like to want to be lied to. To be protected from the truth that did nothing to help Chloe in the first place.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I really hate happy endings. And while I was pleased with part 1, I felt it needed a little something more to finish the story. Hate the ending if you like, but I usually only respond to constructive criticism. Enjoy, fellow readers.

PART 2

Sometimes she thinks she doesn't want to be here. There's literally just too much inside her head and all she wants is to sleep and lets the numbness take her someplace else, someplace she can be quiet and thoughtless and let the white of her mind seep into her bones and muscles and let it all blend together.

Sometimes she'd rather be dead. These are blunt thoughts but she has them nonetheless. She sits in her apartment with Clark and he can be smiling at her and talking about his day and she'll still think it.

She'll smile back at him, tilts her face toward the soft summer breeze that dances around her face and think, 'What if I were dead now? What if you came in the door and there I was lying on the mattress, calm and still, and dead. A moment so still you wouldn't believe it was happening. But I know you, you'd hear the empty death rattle of a heart no longer beating and that would be it.'

It's a finality, and she hates that she clings to these thoughts with hope.

It claims her in the oddest places, when she sees a little girl handled too roughly by her mother, it claims her then. When Clark smiles at her like she's still worth what she was six months ago, like she's worth more which is hardly what she could be. These are the impossible things. She could never tell Clark that.

He gets upset when he sees that she's still not willing to talk about things. About what keeps her distant and what really happened. These are the things I want to bury with me, she repeats over and over in her mind hoping that Clark's superhuman abilties can pick up what she so desperately wants to shout.

'These things with me, are burden enough for one, and what keeps the days bright and inconsequential is that only I know and that you can somehow keep the strength to stay with me'

She can barely muster the courage to stay strong for herself. She is selfish. She needs Clark.

On good days she showers and makes breakfast, pours coffee for the two of them while he sets the table. He brushes the hair behind her ear and sees her eyes crinkle and kisses the corners of her mouth. She buries her hands in the hair at the nape of his neck and and looks at him like she always has, like she could look at him for the rest of her life. And he wants her to.

On bad days she can barely stand, and chews at the ends of her fingers, anxious. Her whole body shakes and it almost exhausts _him_ to help her get the pills down, where she'll stare at him (without really seeing that he's there) with the glazed over reflection of someone he can barely recognize, a person who can barely cling to the semblance of living. He looks into her fever eyes and sees only despair. He can barely take it, because she asks of him, always asks of him on days like these, wordlessly, to end it for her. 'Give up' she tells him, 'Or you'll be taking care of my shell for the rest of your life'

'I love you' he answers back. And she curls up a little more on the inside and pretends she cannot hear him.

She gets tired of him asking to live for something she no longer understands. At times it feels as if he reads her a poem in a different language and is begging her to tell him that it's beautiful when she can't understand what the poem is even about. 'It's beautiful!' he shouts at her, 'Tell me it's beautiful!'

She's not sure she ever can.

When her bad days are over and her life doesn't seem to want to tilt off its axis as bad as before, she wakes slowly and dazedly, a side effect of the medecine. She swallows thickly and feels as though she is falling through air, she almost begins to panic. But then she feels him, his arm steady and strong around her waist and she is yet again grounded to this man and to her life.

Turning around in his arms she watches him sleep for just a little, knowing soon he'll be awake.

He's deep in sleep, she places her hands softly, tentatively against his cheek, brushing her thumb over his brow. She moves in closer to him, and whispers, "Remeber when we used to chase the sunset? When all we could see was our hands, ghosting over fields of flowers, weeds, and tall grasses? They linger on after us, we can still lift our hands upwards towards the bluest sky I'll ever know and take root. I promise" This is the end of her, she knows it. When her dialogue slows to crazy babble she knows that it's never far off. The end. She sees it glaring at her in thick red letters and feels relief at the fact that it does not look like a beginning to a story.

Chloe glances over his shoulder at the angry clock whose eyes glare '3:52' in red. Silently, she disentangles herself from him and enters the bathroom. The light flickers on and Chloe stares at her pallid reflection, the reflection that bathrooms with no windows always seem to create. Dazed, Chloe lifts her hands and cradles her face in her hands.

She can feel it, this is the end. If not now, then soon. Very soon. 'I'm sorry'. 'I'm so sorry', she wants to scream. 'I wanted to be better for all of you, I really did. If anything, for all of you. But at the end of the day I'm still me, and no matter how much you change around me and anchor me I'm still slipping farther and farther into matter much heavier than gravity, than love'.

Chloe shuts off the lights, pads softly back to bed, closes her eyes and pretends to sleep. Her head whispers lyrics of songs her mother used to sing when she was very little and monsters still lived under the bed instead of in corners and in the fabrics of her clothes.

Tears leak out of her eyes, they cling to her ears and to the soft of her pillow. She can feel them hot and mournful on her neck. Sorry for the world that brought her here and cannot seem to take her back. 'Please take me back' she thinks, 'Let me go back, if anything, now' she ponders with finality 'Now I'd like to return to the earth'.

The tears come in quicker and heavier torrents. Turning desperately to her side she burrows into Clark; she sometimes forgets that he's there, that he's even an option as a solution to her sorrows (she wonders, but _knows_, that's a bad sign).

"Clark" she whispers, pausing to kiss his neck and tangle her hands in his dark hair. Inhaling sharply she feels him stir and come to life, his hands settle on the hips that have managed to align with his. "Chloe" he moans, "What is it? What's wrong?" He can feel the wetness of her cheeks as they kiss his neck with fervor. He tries to push those feelings aside when she grips him like she can, with force and passion that he thinks only she can make him feel.

"I just" she stutters, but shakes her head, and kisses him deeply instead and inserts one sinful leg inbetween his and tangles and intertwines in all the wrong, but right, ways.

Clark can only kiss her back fervently, slip his tongue in to mingle with hers, and slide a hand down to her but and pull her more forcefully against him.

Rolling them over Clark crushes her against him, feeling that this is what she needs. What he needs; to know she's there, still responsive. And as her thighs spread open to accomodate him she can feel that anchor losing weight, just a little, but just enough. She slides her hand under the cotton of his t shirt and glides her hands along the silkiness of his back and pulls the offending shirt off.

"I need you" she whines, throwing her head back as his hand uncharacteristically reaches past the elastic of both her pajamas and underwear and touches her wetness with rough hands. "Like this" she moans, "Always like this". She doesn't know where his sudden roughness comes from but she finds herself liking it. In a sadistic kind of way she wants him to hurt her.

He seems to understand the almost primal urge that she needs of him right now, and like a school boy eager on his first day of school to get all the answers right, he meets her with experienced enthusiasm.

"Chloe, look at me" Clark implores, watching as her hazy eyes languidly focus on his own. He watches her mouth open and a tortured moan escape her as he suddenly plunges two fingers inside of her. Startled, she clenches around him, provoking her to groan and undulate against him.

She can feel him, hard, against her thigh. Sucking her bottom lip into her mouth she hastily slides her hand down and into his boxers and grips him with urgency moving up and down with practiced slowness. His contact falters, as his eyes slip and close briefly at the assault of pleasure she gives him.

"Clark please" she begs. In one fluid motion his fingers slip out of her and drag her bottoms off of her. In turn she releases him, not without a groan on his part, and slides his boxers down his body while he shrugs them across the room.

Rolling onto his back he pulls her onto him. Looking down at him, Chloe feels immensely more powerful at the unexplored position he has put her in. Flushed and heaving Chloe braces one of her hands against his chest and brings one to her own breast. Clark heaves one huge breath after the other at the goddess straddling him. Surprised at the her dominant behavior and his own aroused reaction to it. Unable to withstand the tedium Clark leans up and captures her in his arms, pulling her up and over him. Her knees at his side she takes him in slowly and sensually. As they stare into each others eyes, her breath hitches and Clark finds himself unable to think, unable to speak, only able to follow every instinct his body is telling him to do.

He pushes himself up and into her and Chloe cries out and clings to him with a renewed urgency. "Yes, please" He hears her beg again, and wishes he could speak in order to say that whatever she wants, it's hers. Cradling her neck with one hand and her but with the other Clark drives into her harder, and faster, running after his instincts and the moans that seem to urge him in the right direction. Together they ride each wave of pleasure, chasing each others nirvana as far into the night as they can. Until finally, spent, Chloe and Clark give in to their exhausted bodies and chase dreams instead.

But in the morning Chloe wakes, entangled in her lovers arms, and stares at the wall with resigned indifference. She has slept the amount necessary to feel energized but can only feel the fatigue that comes with numbness. 'Today' she's sorry to think 'I can't do this beyond today'

She's not even sure she could tell you what color the wall is, it's so completely beyond any capacity she pretends to have. Chloe feels Clark's breath softly touch her neck and she wants to cry but she can't. Behind her, Clark begins to wake and with practiced ease Chloe's eyes begin to shut once more, feigning sleep and all its diminishing abilities.

'If I sleep' she thinks 'I don't have to tell you how I feel' and she feels Clark nuzzle his head one last time in her neck before he begins to pull away

'If I sleep' she muses once more 'I don't have to tell you why I was crying last night' and she hears the shower start in the bathroom as a solitary tear leaks and spreads over her pillow against her wishes

'But most importantly, my love, I don't have to watch you walk away and wonder if it's the last time I'm going to see you. Because it might, it very well may be'.

She wanted to be stronger, all her life she hated those girls who pretended to be damsels (most of the girls that Clark had to save) but for the life of her she couldn't care anymore.

She's not sure if it's beautiful out, a beautiful late spring day. But she can hear the birds singing, she thinks it's the saddest thing she's ever heard.

When Clark gets out of the shower he can immediately tell something is wrong. Grabbing a towel hastily he realizes there is a certain rhythm missing, a certain bumping, a certain beat.

He finds her there, where he left her. He doesn't need to step closer and feel her chest, place two fingers against her neck to know that she's dead, but he does it anyway.

It's a beautiful spring morning, he thinks. But it's filled only with the things they have lost.

END


End file.
